


Petecure

by sapphireswimming



Series: Bouffage [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Castle of Lions (Voltron) - Freeform, Food, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Hunk & Keith (Voltron) Friendship, Hunk (Voltron) Cooks, Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, One Shot, Season/Series 01, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26417122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphireswimming/pseuds/sapphireswimming
Summary: Keith is tired of eating goo.
Relationships: Hunk & Keith (Voltron)
Series: Bouffage [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920139
Kudos: 5





	Petecure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cthulhu_with_a_fez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_with_a_fez/gifts).



> Originally posted here: https://sapphireswimming.tumblr.com/post/182235547164/petecure-a-voltron-fic
> 
>  **Petecure** ( _noun_ ), modest cooking; cooking on a small scale
> 
> For [cthulhu_with_a_fez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_with_a_fez/pseuds/cthulhu_with_a_fez)'s birthday

Keith was panting hard, sweat beading down his neck by the time he finally ordered the gladiator to power down. His entire body _hurt_ but he liked the burn.

It was one of the reasons he liked coming down to the training deck so often when he was free. Going up against the sleek humanoid robot kept him sharp, always on the move. And when you were fighting for your life, even against a training dummy, there wasn’t really any time to think about anything else.

Like the fact that they were on an alien spaceship. In the middle of an intergalactic war ten thousand years in the making. And were somehow the Universe’s only hope to defeat the Galra.

His sword transformed back into bayard form with a flash.

As the gladiator resumed its place against the wall, Keith rolled his head around his shoulders, listening to the vertebrae in his neck cracking in sequence. Then he pulled one arm across his chest in a stretch. The strain made his arms shake.

He’d spent a couple rounds too long on the sparring floor, and it was already starting to take its toll on him.

He shook out his arms, waving them in wide arcs as he decided where to go next.

He was sweaty and gross and should hit the showers. The warm water would help. But before that, he wanted food. He was the kind of hungry you only get after a long, intense workout, and it would become a physical pain in his stomach if he left it until after a shower.

So off to the kitchens it was. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t the closest stop after the training deck. Coran’s grandfather hadn’t been thinking that one all the way through when he designed the place.

He made his way through the hallways as quickly as he could, swinging his arms from side to side in powerful movements in an attempt to keep them from seizing up on him.

But he was already uncomfortably hungry by the time he got to the mess hall and realized that there was no food. Or, at least, no food to speak of.

Resting a sweaty forearm against the doorframe, Keith stared at the goo hoses coiled up against the wall and groaned.

He did not want goo.

He really, _really_ did not want goo.

Even if it was filling and had all of the protein and whatever else he was supposed to be getting, he was fed up with the way it stuck to everything, coating his teeth and throat with film. The way it oozed everywhere.

Unappealing to begin with, it had lost much of its charm as a constant source of food after their food fight at the table meant that he was picking it out of his hair and behind his ears and every wrinkle in his clothes for days afterward.

Nearly everything in the Castle of Lions was a significant upgrade from what was left of his home in the desert, but this was not one of them. He would be more than happy to go back to the canned goods and scavenged meat he’d lived off of after getting kicked out of the Garrison. He’d happily never touch the goo again in his life.

But it wasn’t like there were really any other options.

Keith sighed.

There was a fridge, or, at least, what he assumed was a fridge, on the far left side of the kitchen, over by the stovetop. He eyed it curiously. He hadn’t given a thought to it since they arrived. It had probably been empty for the past ten thousand years. Or, worse, hadn’t been empty for the past ten thousand years and was now sporting the finest mold growth in the galaxy.

Unable to resist his now morbid curiosity, Keith walked over to the fridge and slowly extended a hand, wondering if anyone had bothered to check it since they got here.

With a soft _pop_ , the doors opened and frosty air billowed out in a cloud around him. Keith coughed, quickly covering his nose with the crook of his arm in case he was breathing in mold. But once he looked up, he saw that there was no fuzz, no moldy growths, no foodstuffs that had gained sentience in the past few millennia.

But it wasn’t empty, either.

In fact, it looked like a fairly normal fridge. Sleeker tech than he was used to, of course, and with a lot more vegetables in one place than he had ever seen. There were plants packed in high on every single shelf: bags of what looked like kale and spinach in several distinct shades of blue, as well as bunches of herbs, and something that might have been squash, if he was more confident about what a squash looked like.

He leaned forward to get a better look at it, pushing the doors open wider. Almost as soon as his fingers brushed against the vegetable, there was a yell from behind him.

“Ahhhh! No, put that back!”

Keith’s hand flew up so quickly it nearly knocked over the shelf and he had to pinwheel in order to keep from falling over as he turned, heart pounding, to see Hunk standing in the doorway.

He was standing, both arms outstretched, and a bag full of slightly glowing pink spheres were splattered across the floor where he’d dropped them. Hunk ignored them, stepping around them quickly as he all but ran forward.

“Don’t pick that up,” he said, breathlessly, all but begging Keith to step away from the fridge.

Keith was surefooted again, and didn’t feel like his heart was going to jump out of his chest anymore. He blinked at Hunk, then turned back to the innocent looking lumps in the fridge in confusion.

“Why not?” he asked.

Hunk’s eyes flew wide and he blurted, “I don’t know if that’s poisonous yet!”

Keith stared at him.

“I just picked it this morning and Pidge and I don’t have the scan results back yet,” Hunk went on to explain as Keith’s face twisted in disbelief.

“So… wait…” he said, putting a hand to his temples. “So you’re keeping it _in the fridge_?”

“Just until we find out if it’s edible or not,” Hunk assured him.

“In the _fridge_?” he repeated incredulously. “You said it might be poisonous!”

“Well, I don’t want to waste it if it’s good!” Hunk protested, the tips of his index fingers tapping together. “I’ve got big plans for that if we can eat it,” he said.

“Right,” Keith said glumly, finally turning to close the fridge door, careful not to touch anything inside. “If we can eat it.”

“Well, it’s not like anyone else has gone in there,” Hunk mumbled in his defence. “I didn’t think I needed to put up a huge warning sign to tell everyone to keep out of the fridge no one else uses.”

“Yeah,” Keith huffed as he swung the doors closed. “That’s because we don’t have any food,” he pointed out, turning on his heels only to catch sight of the goo station and rediscover how truly unappetizing an option it was, despite the low rumbling in his stomach.

Screwing up his face, he bypassed the bowls and resentfully made his way to the stash of space juice boxes. He picked one up and took a seat at the island in the middle of the room, opposite where Hunk had just grabbed a cloth out of a low drawer.

He pouted as he viciously poked the little straw into the pouch. Too viciously, because it stabbed through both sides of the thin film, threatening to spill everything over his clothes and the island if he moved wrong.

“Euhhhhh,” he sighed explosively, wanting to chuck the entire thing at the wall if he knew the outburst and ensuing clean-up detail wouldn’t make him feel just that much worse.

“Oh, whoa, hey, man,” Hunk said, quickly redirecting his attention to the situation at hand. “Here, take this,” he said, holding out a glass.

Keith gratefully dumped the pouch upside-down and watched the contents trickle down into the cup. He squeezed the pouch to help it along, then shook out the last remaining drops. Just as he started looking around for what do with the empty pouch, Hunk swapped it out for the cloth he’d grabbed earlier.

“Uh, thanks,” Keith said, bobbing it in his hands before wiping them.

“No problem,” Hunk said, dumping the pouch into the waste chute. But when he turned around, he saw Keith had already climbed off of his chair and was cleaning up the mess in the doorway. “Ah, you don’t need to do that,” he said, rushing over. “I was going to-“

Keith stared up at him, cloth halfway to one of the pink shapes that had spattered on the ground. “This isn’t going to kill me, is it? Melt my hands or anything, right?” he asked.

“Uh, no,” Hunk said, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, it should be fine.”

“Then it’s fine,” Keith said, wiping everything up.

Hunk blinked at him. “Uh, thanks,” he said, as he knelt down to pick up the few that hadn’t exploded upon impact.

“No problem,” Keith said.

They both pushed up at the same time, Hunk with four pink spheres clutched to his chest and Keith with a drenched cloth that he maneuvered around so it didn’t drip everywhere.

“Where do you want this?” he asked.

“Uh, oh, the sink is fine,” Hunk said, laying his treasures out on the counter as Keith unceremoniously dumped the mess in the sink.

As he washed his hands, Hunk looked over. “You’re up early,” he noted.

Keith looked back at him with a sideways glance. “So are you?”

“So, uh, what were you doing? Were you training? You look like you might have been training. Cause you’re, you know, all sweaty and stuff.”

Keith raised an eyebrow.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with being sweaty or anything. Sweaty and stink…” he broke off before he could dig himself into a hole but Keith didn’t seem to have minded. He climbed back onto his chair and swirled his new glass of space juice around in his hand.

“Sooooooo,” Hunk said, rearranging the pink spheres for a minute before turning to look at Keith over his shoulder. “Long training session?” he guessed.

Keith nodded.

“Not hungry?” he asked, quizzically, nodding at the glass.

“Oh, I’m hungry, alright,” Keith returned sourly. “Could eat an elephant,” he muttered.

Hunk laughed. “Sorry, no elephants here.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, sipping at his juice again.

“You should have more than that, you know,” Hunk said, looking at him seriously. “You were probably in there for a couple hours, right? You need some carbs and protein and stuff.”

Keith considered Hunk for a moment, wondering how he’d known how long he’d been training, then decided that didn’t matter because Hunk was right. His stomach was squirming uncomfortably now and he needed more than just the juice.

But, looking back over to the goo again, he found that he still felt nothing but complete and total apathy toward getting any, let alone eating it. “I don’t feel like it,” he said, making a face.

Hunk followed his look to the goo station and pulled a face of his own. “Yeah, man, I hear you. that stuff is nasty,” he said.

Keith turned to him in surprise. “I… I thought you liked that stuff?”

“Me?” Hunk laughed loudly, turning to him with a spoon in hand. “No. No way,” he said, spoon swinging his denial. “Well, I mean, it’s grown on me, I guess. Kinda had to since there’s no choice because it’s basically been our only food option since we got here. But it’s so… blegh,” he said, eloquently.

Keith blinked at Hunk, uncomfortably started by this revelation.

“And don’t get me started on the texture!” Hunk continued. “And I mean, I’m a texture guy,” he said, hand over his chest. “At heart, ‘cause, like, variety is the spice of life, right?”

He heaved a huge sigh and looked over at Keith commiseratingly.

“Anyway,” he said, turning back toward the counter. “I would go for some of the Garrison’s yam enchiladas right now. Even the cheese French toast, which, as everyone rightly noted, is a perversion against all mankind.”

“Me too,” Keith said. He stared down at his glass. “Didn’t think it could get much worse than canned chili and peanut butter sandwiches every day.”

“Oh,” Hunk said, looking back at him with wide eyes. “Oh man. That’s rough. That… that what you had at that shack?”

“Yup,” Keith said, popping the end of the word. “Pretty much,” he said, swirling the glass around so that the liquid sloshed up the sides.

“So… what kind of food do you like?” Hunk asked curiously as he continued his work at the counter.

Keith shrugged, then realized Hunk couldn’t see him with his back turned. “I’ll eat just about anything, I guess,” he said. “Just… not…” he glared at the goo station again.

Hunk laughed. “That’s fair,” he said, chopping away. “But is there a kind of food you particularly like?” he asked again. “Favorite meals from home or from the Garrison? Taco Tuesday?”

Keith made a face, but it was less a grimace and more a grumbling confusion as he tried but failed to come up with an answer. It took Hunk a few long moments to realize that Keith might not have thought through what he’d put on a list of favorite foods.

Something twisted deep in his gut at the thought, and he vowed to do something to change that. Somehow. Even if they didn’t have access to any normal food from Earth here in the Castle.

He wasn’t sure how he could do it. But the first step was obvious. They had to get something to eat that wasn’t goo.

So he turned back to the counter and redoubled his efforts, trying to hurry his preparations.

“Yeah,” he called over his shoulder, trying not to let the silence grow too awkward between them. “I don’t know what my favorite foods are either, really,” he said, pretending to have misunderstood Keith’s expression. “I mean there’s just so much to choose from!” he said, slicing some swirly looking marshmallow plants and divvying them up between two bowls.

“Because where would you even start?” he asked, turning around to catch a glimpse of Keith’s thankfully amused expression as he took another sip from his glass. “There’s rice dishes and pasta dishes. And soup and bread, oh man, bread. And then you’ve got your meats and veggies and dairy. And Indian food and Thai food and Filipino food,” he counted them off on his fingers, starting over with each new classification and soon running out of fingers to continue.

“There’s too much to choose from!” he said, making a cheerfully frustrated noise. “It’s hard enough just picking, like, pizza toppings, man. Because do you go with a classic pepperoni? Or Hawaiian? Or a mushroom, sausage, green pepper combo? Or white pizza? Or chicken and artichoke? Like, ahh, it’s all just so good,” he said, eyes and mouth both watering at the images he conjured up in his mind’s eye.

“Dude,” Keith said, sounding like he wasn’t sure if he was impressed or worried.

Hunk laughed a little self-consciously, then, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, too much talking about pizza?”

Keith shook his head a little and smiled. “Nah. Never too much talk of pizza,” he said. “But…” he trailed off, not entirely sure where he was going.

“Hmm?” Hunk asked, tilting his head back as he scraped the sides of the bowl.

“Nothing,” he waved his hand. “But… you really like food, huh?”

Hunk scoffed at the obvious statement. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s kinda the basis for all of human life, isn’t it? Civilizations have been build upon food. Society is formed around food. It’s what defines entire cultures around the world!”

Keith raised an eyebrow, not entirely sold on the claim.

“We all need food to survive. We eat like three times a day,” Hunk said, a little quieter now. “That’s a lot of your life spent eating, you know? So, like, you might as well make it good food, right?”

Keith could agree with that. “Well, that would be nice,” he said. “Too bad we’re stuck on an alien planet with nothing but green goo to eat,” he sighed.

“Not… necessarily,” Hunk said, putting on the finishing touches.

Keith’s forehead furrowed. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly.

“Well,” Hunk said, turning around with something in his hands. “I don’t know what these are going to taste like,” he offered, placing a bowl down in front of Keith and another in front of himself as he pulled up a magnetically anchored stool for himself on the other side of the island. “But at least it’s not goo.”

Keith stared down at his bowl, piled high with swirled puffy things and what might have been some kind of berry on top of some sliced beet looking things. He pulled it closer to him slowly.

Hunk couldn’t tell if it was in reverence or distrust, but Keith readily grabbed the makeshift chopsticks Hunk had discovered in one of the Castle’s many storerooms.

Twirling them around, he was about to dig in when he suddenly paused. “You’re sure nothing in here’s going to kill me, right?”

Hunk grinned. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “Pidge and I, we set up this program that scanned each ingredient for its basic component parts and chemical makeup and then we analyzed that and compared it to your—“

“Okay, okay,” Keith cut him off with waved chopsticks. “I get it. Just… wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to kill me.”

Hunk gasped in mock offence. “Me? Kill you off? How could you think such a thing?” he cried in an overdramatic voice. “I can’t kill you,” he said, “because… then we’d be down a paladin and…” his tone suddenly changed to something more worried. “We wouldn’t be able to form Voltron and then Zarkon would probably be able to take over the rest of the galaxy no problem and—“

Keith stopped with his food halfway to his mouth, staring at Hunk who was visibly going off onto increasingly distressing tangents.

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” he said, one hand held out as if to pacify him. “Calm down, Hunk,” he said, staring at him with wide eyes. “It’s okay.”

Hunk blinked at him. “Oh,” he said. “Right, yeah, uh, sorry, I just…”

“Eat your food,” Keith ordered through a mouth full of food before he could continue his nervous rambling. He jabbed his chopsticks at Hunk’s untouched bowl for emphasis.

Hunk plopped down in surprise with a quiet, “Okay,” as he picked up his own chopsticks. He didn’t start eating right away, though, too intent upon watching Keith’s initial reaction to the meal.

Keith took his time chewing, then swallowed. Paused a minute. Stared down at his bowl.

Hunk watched him nervously.

“Well,” Keith said, stretching his arms off to each side. “Not dead,” he proclaimed. “And that,” he said, pointing down at his bowl, “is a whole lot better than the goo.”

Hunk smiled tentatively.

Keith grinned. “Come on, man, quit worrying. You said you already checked this stuff and I trust you. And Pidge,” he added. “Besides, none of us are going anywhere until we have a chance to punch Zarkon in the face.”

Hunk grinned. “Heheh, good one,” he laughed before digging in. He ate more slowly than Keith, rolling each bite over his tongue, considering the taste and blended palette as he chewed and swallowed.

“Hmm,” he said, considering. “Not bad for a first try. Seems kind of dry, though. Could use a bit more sauce. It’s just hard when there isn’t any good sauce making material around,” he said, screwing up his face in thought.

“There’s those pink things that splattered when you dropped them,” Keith pointed out, digging down further into his bowl that was already half empty. “Or the goo, honestly, because the one thing it’s good at is covering stuff. And that’s what you want for a sauce, right?”

Hunk brought down both hands on the table and stared at Keith, who blinked at him, suddenly worried. “What?” he asked, mouth full.

Hunk turned to stare at the goo dispenser, then at the counter where he’d been working. “Yeah. Yeah,” he muttered to himself, hand on his chin as he thought hard. “Yeah, that might work if I took some of the… and then add in the… or if I sauté it? Oh yeah, that might be better because then you’d get the flavors out of the fresh stuff and that might actually work…?”

It became clear to Keith after a few moments that Hunk had completely disappeared into his head and wasn’t about to stop muttering his mental notes and calculations any time soon. He shook his head, leaving him to rhapsodize over whatever ideas he was formulating for his next culinary experiment.

But until then, he thought after a quick internal debate, he decided that Hunk wouldn’t even miss his bowl of food. In fact, it would be helping him, to take it, and finish it, and rinse it out in the sink. It would be like helping him clean up after all of his hard work preparing everything.

So, he nodded as he pushed his empty bowl aside and slowly reached out for Hunk’s, who didn’t even notice as it slid across the table, it was doing him a favor.

Really.


End file.
